3 was meeting officials from Communist China in Mind of Evil, played by Chinese actors, and claimed Chairman Mao to be one of his personal friends... Of course if Chinese intelligence would have chosen to test that gem, they would have called him an imposter since it's more than likely to have been One or Two who had these Chinese adventures in Chairman Mao's youth.

Would a real Chinese ever have looked as scary-"Chinese" as that uncanny dude did? I think he put some of the stuff in his face in-universe, picked Mr. Sin as the puppet's name, to make it all scary cool, to sell tickets. Plus they did a joke about prejudice, with the gun, even if it's easy to read too much into it.

The book was written by a consortium of 23 academics and bloggers, primarily Americans, partially Australian, and with only a few Brits. The fact that a bunch of non-British folks are bitching about a British show lends them precious little credibility to begin with. Add to that that they're academics and feminist issue bloggers, I just really don't think the book should be taken seriously.

If they wanted to bitch about NCIS being racist, by all means, but Doctor Who? Sorry, not your country folks. STFU/GTFO.

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Just to clarify: your argument is that "academics" ought never to be taken seriously? Is that your real opinion? Not only is that an ad hominem fallacy, but it's a damned bizarre one. Martin Luther King Jr. was an academic. Most of the major movers and shakers in the feminist movement of the 70's (a movement that every woman on this BBS board is living the fruits of) were academics, and "feminist issue" people. The people who are (hopefully) eventually going to save this planet from climate change extinction are going to be academics. Since this is primarily a science fiction board, allow me to point out that many of the best science fiction authors of all time were / are academics. I'm just saying - it was a very strange comment for you to make. (Perhaps I misunderstood?)

Anyway, the attack of racism on Doctor Who would certainly be very true decades ago. Talons of Weng Chiang is the most obvious example, but there are others. And, as has been pointed out, the RTD era was actually very good about showing equal representation, at least in terms of black people. Not living in England, I honestly have no idea whether other minorities are not being equally and fairly represented, but in terms of black representation, I have absolutely no complaints. (Compare to an American show, say, Friends, which took place in New York City, for God's sakes, but had about 99% white people - awful, just awful.)

Now, as for sexism in Doctor Who - that's a different story entirely. There's an issue that BBC and Moffat should really do some soul-searching about.....

She says an episode in 2007 had the Doctor speaking dismissively of Martha's fears that she would be sold into slavery as the two characters visited Elizabethan England.
The Doctor tells her to "walk about like you own the place. It works for me."
The author claims the comment "betrays the ignorance of writers about historical racial violence and contemporary white privilege".

Racism? are you kidding me? Micky is the only one I can think of who has banged 2 of the Doctor's companions (Rose & Martha) LOL. Martha was a medical student who did become a doctor, unlike shop girl Rose, temp Donna, stripagram Amy and nanny Clara. It was almost reverse racism when RTD constantly displayed most couples at interracial or gay.

She says an episode in 2007 had the Doctor speaking dismissively of Martha's fears that she would be sold into slavery as the two characters visited Elizabethan England.
The Doctor tells her to "walk about like you own the place. It works for me."
The author claims the comment "betrays the ignorance of writers about historical racial violence and contemporary white privilege".

Click to expand...

Well now, that's a good point.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but it is actually a good point. A black writer would not have given the white Doctor that line to say to a black companion, and a black Doctor could not have said it. (In fact, come to think of it, a black Doctor couldn't even enter the vast majority of Earth's time periods that he does and act like the leader he always does - he wouldn't have that freedom. The people from those time periods would never treat him the same way. Perhaps that's why they're avoiding making the Doctor black - because it would force the writers to deal with real-life racial politics in a way that makes them uncomfortable. This time travel show would finally be forced to present the past as it actually was, and not as the white guy's fantasy it often has been depicted as.)

She says an episode in 2007 had the Doctor speaking dismissively of Martha's fears that she would be sold into slavery as the two characters visited Elizabethan England.
The Doctor tells her to "walk about like you own the place. It works for me."
The author claims the comment "betrays the ignorance of writers about historical racial violence and contemporary white privilege".

Click to expand...

Well now, that's a good point.

Click to expand...

Though it does seem like a response one would expect from the Doctor and the writer didn't ignore the issue altogether. It didn't seem too out of place in an episode where no one bats an eye at a woman wearing a tank top, a leather jacket, jeans and big hoop earrings.

Anyway, the attack of racism on Doctor Who would certainly be very true decades ago. Talons of Weng Chiang is the most obvious example, but there are others.

Click to expand...

There is worse than that, The Ark has some dreadful colonial racist politics underpinning it and The Celestial Toymaker is just straight forward racist with its caricature of the Chinese and Micheal Gough hamming it up with his yellowface speech patterns plus the use of a version of Eenie Meenie Miney Moe that was problematic even during that time-period given what was happening with Civil Rights in the US.

I think people missed my point. Doctor Who, and television entertainment in general, should not be an exercise in political correctness, it shouldn't be turn taking, and we shouldn't be sitting working out what percentage of the characters are what. This is supposed to be entertainment, the telling of a compelling story by people experienced in doing so, on either side of the camera.

It's like fair employment. A person should not get a job, or be denied a job, simply because of quotas of "how many of your sort we already have".

Take Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS as an example. Yay, we have 3 black brothers running their own business. But can the actors act? Hell no, they were awful. They weren't awful because they were black, they were awful because they were bad actors.

There is worse than that, The Ark has some dreadful colonial racist politics underpinning it and The Celestial Toymaker is just straight forward racist with its caricature of the Chinese and Micheal Gough hamming it up with his yellowface speech patterns plus the use of a version of Eenie Meenie Miney Moe that was problematic even during that time-period given what was happening with Civil Rights in the US.

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Eurgh, I forgot about that. There were some...choice comments on another forum when it somehow came up in a discussion about Jimmy Saville's bit on The Two Doctors.

And I like the term "uber-positives." There are a bunch of them in cancer-land, too.

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Positive is better than negative, but for every picture I see of someone in a wheelchair visiting the Pyramids or whatever with a caption that says "I can do ANYTHING!", I want to say "Sure, but can you hang Christmas lights on the house or get winter clothes down from the attic?"

They hate me.

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I'll bet they do. I spent only two months using a wheelchair, but those two months were quite... enlightening. Both because of things that were said (or not said) to me, and because I started paying more attention to how people talk about their own disabilities.

The book was written by a consortium of 23 academics and bloggers, primarily Americans, partially Australian, and with only a few Brits. The fact that a bunch of non-British folks are bitching about a British show lends them precious little credibility to begin with. Add to that that they're academics and feminist issue bloggers, I just really don't think the book should be taken seriously.

If they wanted to bitch about NCIS being racist, by all means, but Doctor Who? Sorry, not your country folks. STFU/GTFO.

Click to expand...

Just to clarify: your argument is that "academics" ought never to be taken seriously? Is that your real opinion? Not only is that an ad hominem fallacy, but it's a damned bizarre one. Martin Luther King Jr. was an academic. Most of the major movers and shakers in the feminist movement of the 70's (a movement that every woman on this BBS board is living the fruits of) were academics, and "feminist issue" people. The people who are (hopefully) eventually going to save this planet from climate change extinction are going to be academics. Since this is primarily a science fiction board, allow me to point out that many of the best science fiction authors of all time were / are academics. I'm just saying - it was a very strange comment for you to make. (Perhaps I misunderstood?)

Take Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS as an example. Yay, we have 3 black brothers running their own business. But can the actors act? Hell no, they were awful. They weren't awful because they were black, they were awful because they were bad actors.

Click to expand...

I guess one of the hard things about stuff like this is people see different things. You see three black brothers running a business but I couldn't help watching it thinking it was unfortunately suggestive that they were running a chop shop.

She says an episode in 2007 had the Doctor speaking dismissively of Martha's fears that she would be sold into slavery as the two characters visited Elizabethan England.
The Doctor tells her to "walk about like you own the place. It works for me."
The author claims the comment "betrays the ignorance of writers about historical racial violence and contemporary white privilege".

Click to expand...

Well now, that's a good point.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but it is actually a good point. A black writer would not have given the white Doctor that line to say to a black companion, and a black Doctor could not have said it. (In fact, come to think of it, a black Doctor couldn't even enter the vast majority of Earth's time periods that he does and act like the leader he always does - he wouldn't have that freedom. The people from those time periods would never treat him the same way. Perhaps that's why they're avoiding making the Doctor black - because it would force the writers to deal with real-life racial politics in a way that makes them uncomfortable. This time travel show would finally be forced to present the past as it actually was, and not as the white guy's fantasy it often has been depicted as.)

Click to expand...

I'm not fond of that line (though I've seen it argued that it 'proves' the 10th Doctor and RTD are complete racists which is absurd) but I can't decide if it's better or worse than ignoring the issue entirely.

After all they realistically aren't going to be able to address the issue every time they go back in time and as mentioned they also end up ignoring lots of other things to get away with the time travel stories particularly the way the doctor and sometimes the companions are dressed.

Aha, you've uncovered the crux of the problem. Subjective observation. People looking for racism see it everywhere. People looking for sexist material see it everywhere. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Take Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS as an example. Yay, we have 3 black brothers running their own business. But can the actors act? Hell no, they were awful. They weren't awful because they were black, they were awful because they were bad actors.

Click to expand...

I guess one of the hard things about stuff like this is people see different things. You see three black brothers running a business but I couldn't help watching it thinking it was unfortunately suggestive that they were running a chop shop.

Click to expand...

But why is this bad? In real life bad people come in all colours, shapes, sizes and sexuality. I'd be quite happy for the Doctor to be played by a black or south Asian actor, but equally I'd be quite happy for the Master to be played by a none while actor too. I am the man who wanted Paterson Joseph to be the Doctor, and I'd love to see Adrian Lester as the Master.

If I remember correctly Yaphet Kotto thought it was great that a black man was the villain in Live and Let Die, because black actors were rarely cast as the evil mastermind, just the henchmen.

I think if the Doctor had to address historical prejudice every time he travelled in time there wouldn't actually be time to have an adventure.

And of course stuff like this concentrated on Who itself and ignored The Sarah Jane Adventures, which had Rani's ethnicity brought up several times in the past, and Clyde's addressed as well during WW2.

Something else that does need to be acknowledged if the ethnic breakdown of the UK 2011 census data shows 86% of the population in England and Wales are white, 7.5% South Asian, and only 3.3% Black.

If anything I think the Doctor needs a companion of Indian/Pakistani origin (would have loved to see the doctor from God Complex back again).

Aha, you've uncovered the crux of the problem. Subjective observation. People looking for racism see it everywhere. People looking for sexist material see it everywhere. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.